vineri, 13 noiembrie 2015

World Indology Conference, November 21-23 2015, Delhi, India


Sanskrit Drama in Theory and Practice

Dr. George Anca, Romania





            The greatest Playwrights – Valmiki, Vyasa, Sudraka, Bhasa, Kalidasa, Asvagosa, Bhavabuti are considered together and within Natyasastra, the immortal treaty of Bharata, inspiring upto day, the theorists of Sanskrit drama – Bartrhari, Vamana, Anandavardhana, Abhinavagupta, Mammata... Classic concepts like natya, kavya, rasa, dhvani, pratibha, sahrdaya, sphota made room to revelatory analogies between Sanskrit and Shakespeare's plays, first of all Sakuntala-Hamlet. Prologue-Benediction of Kalidasa's Sakuntala inspired that to Goethe's Faust and Eminescu's Calin/”Kalidasa”. Likewise, for instance, the Tamil “Protest” Theater (1900-1930), or postmodern “enchantment” as being at the core of Shakuntala and the Ring of Recognition”, staged imaginatively in 2010 by George Drance. Natyanova from Kolkata performed in 2011 at Bucharest National Theater a Shraddhanjali based on Meghaduta by Kalidasa, Gita Govinda by Jayadeva, Gitanjali by Tagore.

Theory hints

            “Shall we neglect the works of such illustrious authors as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kālidāsa?” Asked Kalidasa himself in his first play Malavikagnimitram. Indeed, plays by Bhasa, Shudraka, and, especially, Kalidasa, created within the first three centuries of beginning, were most performed.
            Bharata Muni - “leader of the performance” - revealed Nātyaśāstra, in 6000 slokas, 32 chapters, ending with “Descent of drama on the Earth”. There are eight principal rasas: love, pity, anger, disgust, heroism, awe, terror and comedy, and that plays should mix different rasas but be dominated by one. Commentaries of the Natya Shastra are Matanga's Brihaddesi (500–700 CE), Abhinavagupta's Abhinavabharati (artistic analysis) and Sharngadeva's Sangita Ratnakara (13th century – raga structure).
            Only the most elite characters in the plays, only divine beings, kings, and brahmans speak Sanskrit. Other characters - soldiers, merchants, townspeople, etc., - and nearly all women speak colloquial languages – Prakrits. The Nataka plays feature stories about kings and divine beings.  The Prakarana plays revolve around middle-class characters. The existing three hundred Sanskrit dramas end happily, but Bhasa’s Urubhangam. 

Ramayana Play (theory and practice)

Valmiki, Kamban and Tulsidas are universal revealers of Rama, but also of Hanuman. Devotees of Ramayana meet bhakti. The ramayanic spring bring the thirsted receiver to an ever fresh newness of divine spirit and beauty. The music of Hindi Ramcharit Manas, an Indian Divine Comedy, is heard also far out from temple in the hearts of different believers, beyond dry ecumenical talks. The joy to re-tell Raamaayana and awakening from a dream when it is over, made Rajagopalachary to equal in a subliminal way Raamaayana with Seeta herself:
            When the Prince left the city, he felt no sorrow; it was only when he lost Seeta that he knew grief. So with me too. When I had to step down from high office and heavy responsibility, I did not feel at a loss or wonder what to do next. But now, when I have come to the end of the tale of the Prince of Ayodhya, the void is like that of a shrine without a god.” ( C. Rajagopalachari, Ramayana, Bhartya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbay, 1996, p.313).
            Srimad Valmiki Ramayana is smriti („ memory”), an epic poem which narrates the journey of Virtue to annihilate vice. Sri Rama is the Hero and aayana His journey.
            In almost all of North India, the Tulsidas Ramayana, also known as the Ramcharitmanasa, is the most popular. Goswami Tulsidas rewrote the Valmiki version in Hindi in about 1574, changing it somewhat to emphasize Rama as an avatara (incarnation) of Vishnu. Another notable change was that Sita had a duplicate, who was kidnapped while Sita remained safe. In the Kamban Ramayana, popular in the state of Tamil Nadu, segments of the story were changed to better reflect Tamil ideas, including Ravana not being as cruel to Sita.
            The easiest way to attain Lord Rama is to worship Hanuman: “Tumhare bhajan Ram ko pavae”; “Nothhing exist but God”; “You are the whole I am a part”; “I see that you are I and I am you”. One can see firstly an impish young monkey flying to the sun, becoming distracted and falling, thus earning his name which means “broken chin” (Li Min). Think also to Sun Wukong’s Journey to the West, and also to Hobbits journey through the wilderness, into maturity.
            The ancient message of the Ramayana continues to be relevant for the human race. It is not surprising that Mahatama Gandhi was tremendously influenced by the teachings of the Ramayana. If Gandhiji is still relevant for the world so is his guidebook - Ramayana.
            „The Ramayana has come to the London stage in symbolic obeisance to a hydra-headed phenomenon the West's fascination with exotic Eastern faiths. /.../ its director, Sri Lankan Tamil Indu Rubasingham calls 'yet another instance of this amazing ancient story speaking to a community at its time and place and in a way it can understand'. The end result is a quasi-spiritual version of London street life, an exercise the play's writer, Peter Oswald, accepts is a difficult 'balance between the human and the divine' “ (“Ramayana reinvented for alien times and stage” by Rashmee Z. Ahmed in The Times of India, April 19, 2001).

Shudraka, Basha, Ashvagosha

            Three Sanskrit plays are ascribed to Śūdraka - Mricchakatika (The Little Clay Cart), Vinavasavadatta, and , Padmaprabhritaka. Mrcchakatika, a ten-act drama, is set in the ancient city of Ujjayini during the reign of the King Pālaka. The central story is that of noble but impoverished young brahmin, Chārudatta, who falls in love with a wealthy courtesan, Vasantasenā. Their lives and love are threatened by a vulgar courtier, Samsthānaka, also known as Shakara.
            Rife with romance, comedy, intrigue and a political subplot detailing the overthrow of the city's despotic ruler by a shepherd, the play departs from traditions enumerated in the Natya Shastra that specify that dramas should focus on the lives of the nobility and instead incorporates a large number of middle and lower-caste characters who speak a wide range of Prakrit dialects. The story is thought to be derived from an earlier work called Chārudatta in Poverty by the playwright Bhāsa, though that work survives only in fragments.   

Not all is good that bears an ancient name,
Nor need we every modern poem blame:
             Wise men approve the good, or new or old;
            The foolish critic follows where he’s told.
Assistant. - The responsibility rests with you, sir.” (Translation by Arthur Ryder).
            As in many other plays, the same story: the king who falls in love with a maid-servant, the jealousy of his harem, the eventual discovery that the maid is of royal birth, and the addition of another wife. But it is the earliest work of the greatest poet who ever sang repeatedly of love between man and woman. Malavika is a precursor of Sita, of Indumati, of the Yaksha’s bride, and of Shakuntala.
            Urvashi, following a tale from Rigveda, treated dramatically by Kalidasa, survived the changes in the passage from Vedic to classical times. In the Veda, Pururavas, a mortal, loves the nymph Urvashi. She consents to live with him on earth. After the birth of a son, she leaves him. He finds her, pleading by her duty as a wife, even by a threat of suicide. She answers that there can be no lasting love between mortal and immortal: “There are no friendships with women. Their hearts are the hearts of hyenas.” And it remains a tragedy of love between human and divine.
            As the Indian theater permits no tragedy on the stage, Kalidasa has changed the traditional story, with introduction of the queen, the clown, and the court; the curse pronounced on Urvashi for her carelessness in the heavenly drama, and its modification; the invention of the gem of reunion; and the final removal of the curse. The clown observes: “Who wants heaven? It is nothing to eat or drink. It is just a place where they never shut their eyes—like fishes!” The play offers an opportunity for charming scenic display. Like all Indian plays, it is an opera.
            The Dynasty of Raghu is an epic poem in nineteen cantos - 1564 stanzas - over six thousand lines of verse. The subject is the line of kings - the “solar line” - with origin to the sun, having Rama as star: the four immediate ancestors of Rama (cantos 1-9); Rama (cantos 10-15); certain descendants of Rama (cantos 16-19). Kalidasa introduces Valmiki into his own epic, making him compose the Ramayana in Rama’s lifetime. The Dynasty of Raghu has been used for centuries as a text-book in India


         “Kalidasa understood in the fifth century what Europe did not learn until the nineteenth, and even now comprehends only imperfectly, that the world was not made for man, that man reaches his full stature only as he realizes the dignity and worth of life that is not human.” (Arthur Reader, quoted by Jawaharlal Nehru in Discovery of India). ”Kalidasa is considered as the greatest poet of `shringAr' (or romance, beauty). /.../ Sometimes he has used `hAsya' (comedy) and `karuN.' (pathos).” (Sameer Mahajan). 

From Gita: “It does not behove us to kill relations”; “certain is death for the born, / and certain is birth for the dead”. Hamlet : “To be or not to be”... “all that lives must die”. Such correspondences are analyzed by Sangeeta Mohanti in The Indian Response to Hamlet: Shakespeare Reception in India and a study of Hamlet in Sanskrit Poetics (Dissertation, Basel, (2010/2005). In her dissertation (Illinois, 2014), Aesthetics as resistance: Rasa, Dhvani, and Empire in Tamil “Protest” Theater (1900 – 1930), Deepa Sundaram asks herself: “Can aesthetic 'relishing' (rasavada) be transformed into patriotic sentiment and fuel anti colonial resistance?”
            “I live the misterious longing Kalidasa described in Sakuntala( Maytreyi Devy, It does not die, Calcutta, 1976; Bucharest, 1999). Kalidasa: “and his heart overflows with a longing/
he does not recognize”; “O cloud, your splendour enhanced by rainy season, and may you never be separated like this even for a moment from your spouse, the lightning.” (Meghaduta).
            Vasile Voiculescu places Sakuntala on a gypsy tent in the Carpathians. Dionis loves the gypsy Rada, alias Sakuntala . From Dushyanta to Dionis (see at Eminescu, Eliade, Voiculescu), we discretely wake up in the myth of Dionysus journey to India and his becoming a quasi Shiva. We are after Urwashi (Kalidasa), Dulcinea (Cervantes), the Russian Woman (Gib Mihăescu), Ondine (Gireaudoux).
            My Romanian versions of Kalidasa
Meghaduta, in transferred mandakranta meter of 17 syllables, and Jayadeva's Gita Govinda, transposing Sanskrit sounds of the original, were published initially in Delhi. Like Voiculescu with Sacuntala, I paraphrased, later on, Kumarasambhava by Kalidasa in a opera script, Parvati.
            A bodiless voice from heaven said : “Care for your son, Dushyanta. Do not despise Shakuntala. You are the boy’s father. Shakuntala tells the truth.” Then the king received his son gladly and joyfully.
            When he heard the utterance of the gods, the king joyfully said to his chaplain and his ministers: “Hear the words of this heavenly messenger. If I had received my son simply because of her words, he would be suspected by the world, he would not be pure.”
*

            Chārudatta is a generous man from the who, through his charitable contributions to unlucky friends and the general public welfare, has severely impoverished himself and his family. Though deserted by most of his friends and embarrassed by deteriorating living conditions, he has maintained his reputation in Ujjayini as an honest and upright man with a rare gift of wisdom and many important men continue to seek his counsel.
            Though happily married and the recent father of a young son, Rohasena, Chārudatta is enamored of Vasantasenā, a courtesan of great wealth and reputation. After a chance encounter at the temple of Kāma, he has found that she loves him in return, though, the matter is complicated when Vasantasenā finds herself pursued by Samsthānaka, a half-mad brother-in-law of King Pālaka, and his retinue. When the men threaten violence, Vasantasenā flees, seeking safety with Chārudatta. Their love blossoms following the clandestine meeting, and the courtesan entrusts her new lover with a casket of jewelry in an attempt to ensure a future meeting.
Her plan is thwarted, however, when a thief, Sarvilaka, enters Chārudatta’s home and steals the jewels in an elaborate scheme to buy the freedom of his lover, Madanikā, who is Vasantasenā’s slave and confidant. The courtesan recognizes the jewelry, but she accepts the payment anyway and frees Madanikā to marry. She then attempts to contact Chārudatta and inform him of the situation, but before she can make contact he panics and sends Vasantasenā a rare pearl necklace that had belonged to his wife, a gift in great excess of the value of the stolen jewelry. In recognition of this, Chārudatta's friend, Maitreya, cautions the Brahmin against further association, fearing that Vasantasenā is, at worst, scheming to take from Chārudatta the few possessions he still has and, at best, a good-intentioned bastion of bad luck and disaster.
            Refusing to take this advice, Chārudatta makes Vasantasenā his mistress and she eventually meets his young son. During the encounter, the boy is distressed because he has recently enjoyed playing with a friend's toy cart of solid gold and no longer wants his own clay cart that his nurse has made for him. Taking pity on him in his sadness, Vasantasenā fills his little clay cart with her own jewelry, heaping his humble toy with a mound of gold before departing to meet Chārudatta in a park outside the city for a day’s outing. There she enters a fine carriage, but soon discovers that she is in a gharry belonging to Samsthānaka, who remains enraged by her previous affront and is madly jealous of the love and favor she shows to Chārudatta. Unable to persuade his henchmen to kill her, Samsthānaka sends his retinue away and proceeds to strangle Vasantasenā and hide her body beneath a pile of leaves. Still seeking vengeance, he promptly accuses Chārudatta of the crime.
            Though the Brahmin proclaims his innocence, his presence in the park along with his son's possession of Vasantasenā's jewels implicate the poverty-stricken man, and he is found guilty and condemned to death by King Pālaka. Unbeknownst to all, however, the body identified as Vasantasenā’s was actually another woman. Vasantasenā had revived and befriended by a Buddhist monk who nursed her back to health in a nearby village.


*


            A Yaksha, or divine attendant on Kubera, god of wealth, is exiled for a year from his home in the Himalayas. As he dwells on a peak in the Vindhya range, half India separates him from his young bride; After eight months of growing emaciation, the first cloud warns him of the approach of the rainy season, when neglected brides are wont to pine and die. Unable to send tidings otherwise of his health and unchanging love, he resolves to make the cloud his messenger.
            He assures the cloud that his bride is neither dead nor faithless; further, that there will be no lack of traveling companions. He then describes the long journey, beginning with the departure from Rama’s peak, where dwells a company of Siddhas, divine beings of extraordinary sanctity. The Mala plateau. The Mango Peak. The Reva, or Nerbudda River, foaming against the mountain side, and flavoured with the ichor which exudes from the temples of elephants during the mating season. The Dasharna country, and its capital Vidisha, on the banks of Reed River.
            The famous old city of Ujjain, the home of the poet, and dearly beloved by him; and the river, personified as a loving woman, whom the cloud will meet just before he reaches the city. The city of Ujjain is fully described, especially its famous shrine to Shiva, called Mahakala; and the black cloud, painted with twilight red, is bidden to serve as a robe for the god, instead of the bloody elephant hide which he commonly wears in his wild dance.  
            The Hallowed Land, where were fought the awful battles of the ancient epic time. In these battles, the hero Balarama, whose weapon was a plough-share, would take no part, because kinsmen of his were fighting in each army. He preferred to spend the time in drinking from the holy river Sarasvati, though little accustomed to any other drink than wine.
            The Ganges River, which originates in heaven. Its fall is broken by the head of Shiva, who stands on the Himalaya Mountains; otherwise the shock would be too great for the earth. But Shiva’s goddess-bride is displeased. The dark cloud is permitted to mingle with the clear stream of Ganges, as the muddy Jumna River does near the city now called Allahabad.
            The magnificent Himalaya range. The mountain pass called the Swan-gate. And at Mount Kailasa, the long journey is ended; for on this mountain is the city of the Yakshas.
            The splendid heavenly city Alaka,where the flowers which on earth blossom at different seasons, are all found in bloom the year round. Here grows the magic tree which yields whatever is desired. Here are the stones from which drops of water ooze when the moon shines on them. Here are the magic gardens of heaven.
            Here the god of love is not seen, because of the presence of his great enemy, Shiva. Yet his absence is not severely felt. Here the goddesses have all needful ornaments. For the Mine of Sentiment declares: “Women everywhere have four kinds of ornaments—hair-ornaments, jewels, clothes, cosmetics; anything else is local.”
            And here is the home of the unhappy Yaksha, with its artificial pool; its hill of sport, girdled by bright hedges, like the dark cloud girdled by the lightning; its two favorite trees, which will not blossom while their mistress is grieving; its tame peacock; and its painted emblems of the god of wealth. 
            The Yaksha’s bride. The passion of love passes through ten stages, eight of which are suggested in this stanza and the stanzas which follow. The first stage is not indicated; it is called Exchange of Glances. In this stanza and the preceding one is suggested the second stage: Wistfulness.The third stage: Desire. The fourth stage: Wakefulness. the fifth stage: Emaciation. the siath stage: Loss of Interest in Ordinary Pleasures. the seventh stage: Loss of Youthful Bashfulness.
            the eighth stage: Absent-mindedness. For if she were not absent-minded, she would arrange the braid so as not to be annoyed by it. the ninth stage: Prostration. The tenth stage, Death, is not suggested.
            Quivering of the eyelids. and trembling of the limbs are omens of speedy union with the beloved. The cloud is instructed how to announce himself in such a way as to win the favor of his auditor. The message itself. According to the treatise called “Virtue’s Banner,” a lover has four solaces in separation: first, looking at objects that remind him of her he loves; second, painting a picture of her; third, dreaming of her; fourth, touching something which she has touched.
           
  *
           
New York Ramayana
                                                         *

“raag”

basil tulsi
hindu canon
evening raga
serenity


person continuity
one out of thousand but you
the sounds search you
in knowledge of sin


still in yaman
on swastika
of prosperity
without Hitler


you breath self
gods of sounds
embodiments of silence
the luck of epiphanies


everybody with own's and raga
atman encercles you
sitar the reaper of poppies
translator of gitanjali


soft sounds of collapse
in dancing dharma
stay undestructured
thunder raga


argonauts from raga
returning way
cosmic
pray


parents
Gita
Kurukshetra
raag


organ masked in sitar
invitation avatar
no more sadness amar


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